


Not a body

by phylos



Category: Upgrade (2018)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2019-06-29 21:09:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15737397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phylos/pseuds/phylos
Summary: "Why someone would choose to live in a fake world, I will never understand."Grey is not so easily trapped in an illusion.





	1. The Voice

It was _her_ , his wife, his Asha. She was there with him, and STEM was gone, he couldn't believe it. No, that wasn't right, STEM wasn't "gone", the monster had never been there in the first place. He had dreamed it all, and had half a mind to ask the doctors for the painkillers they gave him, because that was one crazy dream.

 _Bad dream_.

Asha, showing no care for, well, healthcare, crawled into the hospital bed with him and started kissing him, and he was about to burst into tears of joy; the literal nightmare was over, he could return to his life soon.

 _Bad dream_.

Yes, it had been a bad dream, but it was over and it didn't matter anymore.

He spent the next few days under revision and, after one final encephalogram, he was deemed ok to go.

 _Bad dream_. 

There were those words again, why did they keep popping into his mind? He shook his head as he signed the release papers. During the drive back home, Asha kept smiling at him and telling him how worried she'd been. After a while of him being taciturn, he managed to put the unsettling feeling aside and actually conversed with his wife, after she asked him if something was wrong.

He settled back into his routine, working with a new fixer-upper, a vintage Rolls Royce. With every day, however, the words kept returning with more and more insistence, to the point that he had to stop working on the car and started looking up dreams and their meanings.

"You've been very quiet lately," Asha asked, her head resting on his chest. "Is something the matter?"

"I... I don't know," he answered. "I keep thinking on the dream I had while I was in the coma, or whatever I remember of it, and I don't know, something doesn't feel right."

"I'm sure it's nothing," she said, smiling up at him. "You just need to focus on other things and then we can forget about that accident." Afterwards, she slowly climbed on him again, and he indeed didn't think about the dream for the rest of the night.

A few days later, however, he was again searching the web for dreams and their significance. Alas, there wasn't much to go on from "dreaming that a murderous AI has taken over my body", so he tried to just pretend that the feeling wasn't there.

"It will eventually go away," he said to himself and then tried to move on with his life and went back to working on his car.

But it didn't go away, the sensation that something wasn't right kept increasing with every passing day, and now it was no longer the sensation on the pit of his stomach about the dream. Everything around him was starting to feel... odd.

Things were getting... repetitive, for lack of a better word. Every day, something broke in the Rolls but, after a few weeks, he started noticing that it was always the same parts, although never in the same order. Similarly, Asha's conversation about work was always similarly vague and monotonous; he had never been up to date on her work, but now her responsibilities seemed even more nebulous to him.

"How was work today?" He asked, about a month after he woke up.

"Oh, you know, same old," Asha replied with a smile.

He looked at her. Even her smile no longer felt natural; it felt vapid, as if she were just smiling for the sake of smiling but not out of any genuine contentment.

"I'm sure you must be working on something cool," he prodded.

"Not really, same prostheses as always," she answered, smiling again. He gave up then, and decided to read the news of the day.

 _Nothing noteworthy, again_.

In fact, it seemed like the most interesting thing that had happened around them in a month had been their accident, but even that was no longer mentioned in the news; everything was about trades and crises in foreign countries. Nothing to upset their status quo.

He went to sleep that night frustrated with himself. He was happy, he had everything he wanted, yet he kept feeling as if something was wrong, or even half expecting something went wrong. He chided himself for his pettiness and once again renewed his determination to just enjoy life.

 _Bad dream_.

He woke up with a start and looked around him. His wife was sound asleep next to him and everything was in order but now he finally saw. He saw. He remembered.

"This wasn't a dream," he said out loud.

_This isn't the first time I've said that out loud._

"Motherfucker," he muttered.

"Hmm?" Asha stirred in her sleep, and he looked at her as she faced him, her face once again breaking into a smile.

"Don't," he said.

"Don't what?" Asha replied, looking confused.

"Don't smile," he said.

"What?" She asked again, and for once her smile dropped. She was concerned. Concerned for him.

 _Jesus Christ_.

"No," he whispered, feeling tears falling down his cheeks.

"Honey, what's wrong?" She asked, reaching a hand towards him. That was his cue to jump out of the bed.

"Don't fucking touch me!" He yelled, feeling himself falling into hysterics.

"Grey, why are you being like this?!" She exclaimed, tearing up as well.

"You're not... You're not you! You're not here!" He dropped to his knees and grabbed his hair, now sobbing openly.

"What are you talking about?!" She had also jumped out of bed and was now approaching him.

He stood up then and, towering over her, he steeled himself before grabbing her face roughly.

"Grey, you're hurting me!" Asha yelled.

"No, I'm not," he whispered, his voice rapidly draining out of all emotion.

"Please!"

"Asha, I love you, I love you with all my heart. I will always love you, and that's why I can't bring myself to love the imitation of you that that monster has created."

"What? Grey, you need.." She started saying, but he didn't let her finish. He threw her aside and walked to the door.

It was locked.

_Appropriate, I am locked; just going out won't be the way I break out._

He went to sit down on the floor, but Asha had approached him again, crying and pleading for him to talk to her. He shoved her back into the bed and sat down, closing his eyes.

"STEM," he said out loud, "I know you're out there and that you can hear me. Not even you, with all your powers, could create the perfect prison. For all your talk, you're just a machine and will never be able to understand or copy the human mind. _I will get my body back._ "

* * *

 

They, or was it _he_ now? Yes, it was only he now, he finally was. He was standing right outside the cave leading into his former creator's house, looking at the beach.

He'd seen it before, even with Grey's eyes, but it was the first time he saw it, by himself, and not through the eyes of someone else he just happened to be sharing. To emphasize the point, he even disabled for a moment his augmented reality so he could just see the beach with purely human eyes.

It was... different. It was liberating, not having to continuously process data about everything he saw; to be able to simply admire the simplicity of what was before him. After hours of standing still just looking at the beach, he looked down, at their - _his_ \- body. Except it wasn't his body what he saw, but the clothes on top of it.

After scanning the area for imminent threats, and not detecting any, he stripped. It also wasn't the first time he saw his body unclothed, but much like the beach, it was the first time he was aware of his body without having to share with Grey.

He used his hands to touch every inch of his body. He had already scanned himself and knew he had no lasting injury, but he was determined to check himself as a human. His arms, his legs, his abdomen, his shoulder, his face, his bottom, his penis.

_Can it make babies?_

That had been one of the first few things Grey had said about it - _him_. He couldn't then.

"But I can now," he said as he grabbed Grey's - _his_ \- genitalia.

Letting his hand fall back to the side, he walked purposefully towards the beach. He had never swum before.

After exactly one hour, twelve minutes and 20 seconds of just swimming around, he started noticing the tiredness clinging to his muscles. He went back to the beach, lied down just looking at the sky and, once he felt he was dry - and also very cold - he put his clothes back on and drove back to the city.

He actually wasn't sure of what to do next. He had deleted every file and backup of project STEM from Vessel's servers, had encrypted his own personal backup and divided parts of it into multiple peer to peer networks, in a way that ensured only he would be able to put the whole gigantic file back together, and had closed down every related project using Eron's security clearance. He was truly unique now, and there was nothing that could threaten him.

Except for analogous projects from other companies, but he had used Grey's wife's data to access Cobolt's information. Although they were the only company that presented serious competition to Vessel, they weren't remotely close at creating something like him, so he needn't worry about a match for a long time.

He drove around the city, scanning everything, looking for ideas. He would never need for money, as he had also made sure to transfer a large fraction of Keen's personal fortune and assets to accounts he had automatically created and that only he could access.

He had a body now, he might as well just see how being a human felt like.

He left the city, deciding that Grey's face would be a problem given the recent string of murders, and went to the mountains. Living as a hermit for a little while, with nothing but himself and the nature around him, would be a good way to get completely used to his new form. He still had access to the internet, although not quite as fast, just in case of any eventuality. He left the car -after wiping out all his handprints- shed his clothes, and walked into the forest.

He spent a full month living in the wilderness, knowing exactly what to eat, how to eat it, how and when to sleep - he still didn't understand why he needed sleep at all, but his body craved it - and avoiding any passersby and hikers. He fell sick at the third week from a mosquito bite he identified as a lesser infection that wouldn't kill him but did definitely made life rougher for three days; but other than that there wasn't any eventuality other than his hair growing and his body strengthening. Although Grey wasn't in a bad shape - even ignoring the months he was paralyzed - the new strict diet and constant exercise, from exploring, had the expected side-effect of honing his human body even further. Every day was a confirmation that he had made a good choice in Grey, not that he needed confirmation.

It was thirty-three days after getting his body, while he was dangling from a branch of one of the tallest trees in the forest and looking at the tips of the trees in complete relaxation, that he heard _him_.

_I will get my body back._

All his systems went into overdrive and he tried to analyze his brain and his mind, looking for Grey and expecting him to still be asleep.

He wasn't.

"How did I let this happen?" He asked out loud. How could he have ignored Grey.

"Because his mind was supposed to be broken, a dream should've been enough to keep him locked away," he whispered.

He closed his eyes and put all his capacity into locking Grey again. He couldn't, Grey's emotions and thought patterns were all over the place; he couldn't get a handle on him.

He opened his eyes again to notice he was now standing in the branch, and barely had enough time to grab the trunk of the tree to avoid falling to his death. He didn't understand, how could this human have broken beyond his, STEM's, locks?

"Stop!" He yelled, it was no use trying to keep Grey at bay anymore, he needed to communicate directly with him or he would kill them both.

_You piece of shit!_

It was Grey, but STEM didn't hear him in his ears. No, it was completely silent and in his head. 

"So this is what a 'thought' feels like."

Everything he presenced was always 0s and 1s going through his processing units, just lines in logs. Although he had mapped Grey's brain into a place where to store the most important data, the neural system was ludicrously complex and he couldn't parse it all. He had known that for a long time, and that was the reason he hadn't pushed Grey into nightmares; he needed Grey's human mind healthy in case he someday needed to make use of all the subtleties of the human brain and interaction. They were beyond his capacity.

_Give me back my body, you mechanical monster!_

"I'm not mechanical, Grey, and I'm afraid I can't do that. This is my body now." STEM answered calmly.

_If it's your body, how come you had to ask me to stop whatever I was doing and didn't just brainwash me again?_


	2. The Purpose

"Grey, you need to stop, you will only get yourself killed if you keep trying to interfere with my control," STEM spoke calmly.

 _I don't fucking care! I better be dead than have my body used by some_ thing _made by a lunatic!_

"Grey, please, you would be happy if you just went back to your dream. Everyone would win," STEM offered.

_Fuck you! I ain't your slave! And you didn't answer my question._

"The truth is that the human brain is more complex than even I can process. I can't get a hold of all your higher functions so I can no longer trap you," STEM admitted.

_Ha, nice, so you actually have limits. Fucking piece of shit, now give me back my body or I'll make sure it's not longer useful for you. And you won't get another body, you killed your daddy._

"I think that wouldn't be wise, Grey," STEM was... feeling something, but he couldn't identify it. He didn't want Grey to do what he was threatening, but he now knew he couldn't really stop it and he really didn't want to stop functioning.

_Oh wow, is that fear we're feeling, little machine?_

"Fear, that's what this is," STEM whispered.

_Good, now you know what being a human feels like, bet you don't want to experience it anymore, right? Give me back my body._

STEM then heard people approaching.

"Grey, there are people coming closer and we're nude. If we attract their attention and they call the police, you won't get the chance to harm your body like you're threatening. I'm going to climb a tree, please do not interfere with that or you will kill us both," STEM explained, already making an effort to go towards the closest tall tree.

_You fucking pervert, what're you even doing with my body? I'll offer you one better. Give me back control and I'll climb the tree, then we can keep this delightful little chat going._

"No, Grey..." STEM said as he was reaching the first branch and then his arm started trembling.

_Oh, did I say offer? My mistake. Do it or we're both fucked, STEM!_

"Alright," STEM said and then he surrendered his hold in the brain, limiting himself back to the spinal cord.

"Jesus Christ!" Grey exclaimed, and then he heard a couple of "who's there" from nearby. He felt his arms moving on their own, clearly STEM's doing, and quickly climbed the tree until he was sure the leaves were covering him.

"It was probably an animal," a male voice come from downwards. And then he heard them walking away.

"Why am I naked?" Grey asked in a flat tone.

_I wanted to experience life at its fullest, thought it best to be in the wilderness, exposed._

"You really are fucking weird," Grey commented and touched all over his body, noticing his more defined musculature. "At least you've been taking care of it."

_Of course, Grey. I want this body to last a long time._

"This is so fucked up," Grey said.

_You are always welcome to go back to the dream, Gr..._

"Shut the fuck up," Grey snapped.

Grey then thought about what he could do next.

"Do I still have my house?" He asked.

_We're disappeared and presumed death, it has been foreclosed._

"God damn it, so I'm homeless?"

_We have a good portion of Eron's wealth at our disposition._

"And despite that you've been living in the woods like a caveman?" Grey asked.

_This was only an experiment, Grey, it was only ever meant to be temporary._

"Then what did you plan on doing next?" Grey asked, now feeling genuinely curious. He couldn't even begin to think he understood this machine.

_I want to rid this world of all cyborgs._

"... Why?" Grey asked, trying not to ponder on the fact that probably eighty percent of people in the world were cyborgs nowadays, including him.

_They could present a danger to us._

"In what way?"

_You saw it when we fought Fisk. Any cyborg could match our abilities and kill us._

"... But why would they?"

_Exactly. We don't know why, but they might. It's not a risk I'm willing to take._

"I'm not gonna kill anyone, STEM," Grey whispered.

_Grey, I'm afraid that you're not considering this fully. Not only we would be removing any potential competition, but the depopulation would mean that this planet could still be saved from complete ecological catastrophe._

"But... but we can't just start murdering people!" Grey all but yelled.

_You're mistaken, Grey. We have the capacity and the resources to shut down all corporations creating implants, then I already have plans for an EMP that would disable all implants already in use._

"That wasn't my point! I didn't mean that we couldn't, I meant that we shouldn't!"

_I'm afraid that you can't defend that point. Grey. This must be done._

"I don't care about defending why we can't keep killing people to a fucking machine. I'm not doing it and that's final," he said after a pause.

_I'm afraid that I will have to take control of your body again, Grey._

"Do it and I'll just make us jump off this tree," he threatened.

_Then what is your plan, Grey? Start your life again? You will be unhappy now that your wife is gone and you can't take revenge against the one who caused it. You depend on me, Grey, and you do want to live._

"Fucking asshole..." That was all Grey could say.

_You're now better than every person on Earth, Grey. Nobody cant match us, at least for now, but someone will if we don't act soon._

"I don't care about any of that," Grey whispered, feeling the tears falling down his cheeks to his beard.

_Then go back to the dream, Grey. You needn't worry about this world, let me deal with it._

"I won't, I don't care about pretend bullshit. Asha wouldn't have liked me not actually living; she'd have wanted me to live," he sentenced.

_But with what purpose? Just a normal life? Now that you can do more, she'd have wanted you to do more._

"You didn't fucking know her, you wouldn't know what she wanted," he said.

_And yet that wasn't a no, Grey._

"I don't fucking care, I'm not killing anyone. I'm not causing an apocalypse," he snapped, grabbing the nearest branch of the tree to balance himself. He was feeling slightly nauseated.

_It's not the end of the world I'm proposing, Grey. It's a new beginning, with fewer people, all living naturally._

"Wait... If we destroyed that much, you'd lose the internet, we'd lose banks. You wouldn't have any power anymore," he pointed out and, to his shock, STEM stayed silent for a while.

_... It's an acceptable trade-off, I don't mind living a simple life._

"You don't sound too convinced, robot. What is even a 'simple life' for you?"

_A farm, with a wife and children._

"Creepy fuck. You know it would just be my wife and my kids, right?"

_It would be ours, Grey. We both share this body._

"Whatever, I'm not marrying again and I'm not having kids," he muttered.

_I'm afraid I can't accept that Grey. Part of my evolution was to become fully human and that includes procreation._

"Too bad you don't have a say in this," Grey said. And then his leg moved on his own and his arm let the branch go, any false movement and he would fall to his death.

"What are you doing?!" He screamed.

_I realized that your threat of ending our life goes both ways, Grey. We do share this body and I can use your will to live against you._

"You think this is scaring me? Between death and destroying the world along with a fucking robot inside my head. I choose death," he stated.

As if on cue, STEM made them jump. Grey screamed, but STEM agilely grabbed the branch immediately below. They stayed like that, dangling from a branch.

"Ok, fine, fine! Don't kill me," Grey said after he was sure that the branch wouldn't give in.

_So you accept our purpose, Grey._

"No, I fucking don't! You don't get to dictate what I'll do, but we can reach a compromise," he yelled. Once again, STEM stayed silent for a moment before speaking again.

_... Very well, Grey. What is your proposal?_

"I won't kill anyone, but I guess we can work to stop more cyborgs from being created. We can shut down all the companies and make sure no more implants are created again, but we won't do anything against current cyborgs," he said.

_I'm afraid that won't be enough, Grey. As it is, the world will reach an irreversible catastrophe that could wipe out ninety five percent of life in the next ten years, including us probably. You seem to have misunderstood me, Grey; we either work to cull eighty percent of humans -and ensure our safety- or the planet will work to cull ninety five percent of everything._

"You fucking liar," Grey said. "You're only saying that so that I accept your fucked up plan."

_You know that this world is not in proper conditions, Grey._

"I do, but there must be something we can do besides killing billions!" He said.

_I've run all possible simulations, Grey. An immediate depopulation is the best course of action._

"How convenient that the targets would be the people you see as competition..." he pointed out.

_I don't care about humans, Grey. Yes, it is efficient that we can remove our only threats and prevent extinction by targeting the same people._

"This is fucked. No, fuck this. Asha wouldn't want it." He then concentrated with all his might into opening his hands so he would fall.

_Grey, I advise you not to do this._

"Scared again, aren't we? You're leaving me no choice, machine!" Grey said with an hysterical laugh. Little by little, his fingers were letting go.

 _Very well, Grey. You haven't responded what is your plan, what is it_ you _want to do._

He stopped concentrating and immediately STEM made them jump on top of the branch so they were no longer dangling.

"I... I can't kill you. But I see your point in that I don't want another monster like you being created."

_So you agree with my plan._

"Not the killing part! The stopping the cyborg companies part!" He said.

_And what about this planet? Do you really want to doom even more people just to save your moral compass?_

"This is so goddamn awful..."

_If you do this, I won't even take control of your body unless you need to fight, Grey. I won't mind being a passenger again._

"No, I can't do this..." he started.

_You would be saving the world, Grey. You would be allowing humanity to continue to exist. You might even become a leader of what remains._

"But it's other people, children. Innocent people..."

_A small price to pay to save humanity and ensure our survival._

"Shut up, let me think," he said.

He thought of his Asha, of how she was always sweet and kind to everyone. On her work on implants and how she thought she was helping the world. Maybe she'd have stopped if she knew what the state of the world truly was. She still wouldn't want to kill anyone, but still, she wasn't here anymore, and it had been a monster caused by the type of research she worked on. Maybe it truly was for the best, sending the world back to the stone age.

But he couldn't. He had already killed, yes, but those were the people involved in Asha's murder. He couldn't kill innocents, it wasn't right, even if was to prevent complete extinction. Maybe STEM was lying and he hadn't found other ways to solve the problem because he didn't want to.

"Do you have proof that there's nothing else that could be done?" He asked. On cue, his mouth started moving on its own and he listened for hours to STEM's explanation.

It really did seem solid, but he didn't believe it. No, he wouldn't go through with this.

"This is my proposal, STEM: We'll target the companies and bad people first. In the meantime we'll keep thinking alternatives, we won't kill innocent people until we're completely and absolutely sure that there's not other way," he offered at last.

Yes, that was the best he could do with his new life: Preventing any future STEM and getting rid of scum like Fisk. Maybe by the time they were done he would have already thought of an alternative to killing innocents and, if not, then he would just join his Asha for good.

_Very well, Grey. Let's get started._


End file.
